[Pramāṇa](https://indike.org/pramana/) › [Studies](https://indike.org/pramana/ins) › [General history and culture](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general) › [The Greeks in Bactria and India](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.tarn-1938) › c18 # The Greeks in Bactria and India c18: Appendix 6. Alexandria of the Caucasus and Kapisa The Greeks in Bactria and India c18 - **Language:** English ### Appendix 6. Alexandria of the Caucasus and Kapisa ### [c18.2](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.tarn-1938.c18.2) The relation of these two towns to each other is a problem. The Alexander historians make it clear that Alexandria was meant to be the capital of the Paropamisadae, and the references to it in the Milindapañha (p. 421 and n. 4) show that it was existing in the second century B.C., in the flourishing period of Greek rule, and probably in the first century also; and there is a Chinese mention of it round about 50 B.C. (p. 340). The literary evidence is then perfectly clear. But the evidence of the coins is equally clear that Kapisa was the Greek capital, for the coins of Pantaleon and Agathocles which show the Zeus of Kapisa holding Hecate τριοδῖτις on his hand prove beyond any doubt that (among other things) Kapisa was successively the seat of these two sub-kings (see on this p. 158). I need not enlarge here on the importance of Kapisa; this book should have sufficiently shown it, and Kapisa continued to be a capital for centuries after the name of Alexandria was forgotten.¹ Now it is unthinkable that there should have been at the same time two Greek capitals of the Paropamisadae; and a solution of the difficulty must be attempted. ### [c18.3](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.tarn-1938.c18.3) ¹ On Kapisa see generally Foucher, \*Afghanistan\* pp. 266, 281 sqq. ### [c18.4](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.tarn-1938.c18.4) In the absence of excavation there can naturally be no certainty about the site of Alexandria; all the sites so far proposed—the most favoured has been the ruin-mounds at Opian near Charikar—are mere guess-work, and the French archaeological mission declined to locate it.² There is however no reason to doubt the statement that it was in Opiane,³ for Alexander founded it on his way northward by the Seistan-Ghazni-Kabul route, which would take him through Opiane on his way to the passes of the Hindu Kush; this means that it stood somewhere on the \*west\* of the united Panjshir-Ghorband river. We are also told that it was close to the Hindu Kush,⁴ that it was the gateway to India,⁵ and that it stood at the meeting-place of the three routes which crossed the Hindu Kush from Bactra (p. 139), the τρίοδος ἐκ Βάκτρων which was in the Paropamisadae. This last is shown by a comparison of the two surviving versions of the bematists’ account of Alexander’s march. Pliny (VI, 61) names as stages along the route the town of ‘the Arachosians’ (see App. 9), Ortospana (certainly Kabul, p. 471), and Alexandri oppidum, Alexander’s city, \*i.e.\* Alexandria. In Eratosthenes⁶ the name ‘the Arachosians’ ### [c18.5](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.tarn-1938.c18.5) ² \*Ib.\* p. 274. ### [c18.6](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.tarn-1938.c18.6) ³ Alexandria no. 5 in Stephanus, ἐν τῇ Ὀπιάνῃ κατὰ τὴν Ἰνδικήν, see p. 96. ### [c18.7](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.tarn-1938.c18.7) ⁴ Curtius VII, 3, 23, in radicibus montis. ### [c18.8](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.tarn-1938.c18.8) ⁵ Diod. XVII, 83, 1, κατὰ τὴν εἰσβολὴν τὴν φέρουσαν εἰς τὴν Ἰνδικήν. ### [c18.9](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.tarn-1938.c18.9) ⁶ Strabo XI, 514. Eratosthenes adds that the τρίοδος was in the Paropamisadae, XV, 723. ### [c18.10](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.tarn-1938.c18.10) is followed by the sentence εἶτ’ εἰς Ὀρτόσπανα ἐπὶ τὴν ἐκ Βάκτρων τρίοδον δισχιλίους. As his version and Pliny’s alike go back ultimately to the bematists’ account they must agree on the stages, and Ortospana-Kabul was nowhere near the τρίοδος; for as, of the three routes across the Hindu Kush, one followed the valley of the Ghorband river and another that of the Panjshir, the τρίοδος, as everyone has seen, can only be at or near the point of junction of the two rivers.¹ This being so, something has fallen out in the text of Strabo XI, 514 after Ὀρτόσπανα; the sentence should read εἶτ’ εἰς Ὀρτόσπανα \[figure, εἶτ’\] ἐπὶ τὴν ἐκ Βάκτρων τρίοδον.² The τρίοδος in Eratosthenes is the same stage as Alexandri oppidum in Pliny; Alexandria therefore stood at (or near) the τρίοδος, i.e. at or near the junction of the two rivers. ### [c18.11](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.tarn-1938.c18.11) ¹ Eratosthenes in Strabo XV, 723; ἡ μὲν ἐπ’ εὐθείας διὰ τῆς Βακτριανῆς καὶ τῆς ὑπερβάσεως τοῦ ὄρους εἰς Ὀρτόσπανα ἐπὶ τὴν ἐκ Βάκτρων τρίοδον ἥτις ἐστὶν ἐν τοῖς Παροπαμισάδαις. The words εἰς Ὀρτόσπανα, which have got in from XI, 514, make nonsense and should be omitted; the meaning is quite simple, ‘the direct road through Bactria and across the Hindu Kush to the τρίοδος in the Paropamisadae’. ### [c18.12](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.tarn-1938.c18.12) ² I am deliberately not considering the distance figures, as I only need the names of the stages. By Pliny’s time more than one version of the bematists’ figures had grown up, VI, 62. ### [c18.13](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.tarn-1938.c18.13) But what did stand at the τρίοδος was Kapisa; the above-mentioned figure of Hecate τριοδῖτις on the hand of the god of Kapisa is conclusive (see p. 158). Kapisa then stood at somewhere about the same place as Alexandria, and its history leaves no doubt that it was in fact the gateway of India, as Alexandria was said to be. The Milindapañha (ante) forbids the assumption that in the second century B.C. Alexandria had ceased to exist and that Kapisa had taken its place. And a physical identification of the two towns is impossible, for Alexandria stood in Opiane, to the west of the united Panjshir-Ghorband rivers, and Kapisa stood in Kapisene³ to the east of them. There is no doubt this, for Kapisene was Kafiristan or part of it; the province could only have lain to the east of the united rivers, because the province to the west of them, Opiane, is fixed by the modern name Opian; and in fact it has been suggested that Kapisa and Kamboja, the name of the people of Kafiristan, must be the same word.⁴ Doubtless the native town of Kapisa was in existence long before Alexander’s time.⁵ ### [c18.14](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.tarn-1938.c18.14) ³ Pliny VI, 92, Capisene habuit Capisam urbem. ### [c18.15](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.tarn-1938.c18.15) ⁴ Lévi, JA 1923 ii p. 52. ### [c18.16](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.tarn-1938.c18.16) ⁵ Pliny VI, 92 implies this. ### [c18.17](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.tarn-1938.c18.17) One further point. It has sometimes been stated that Kapisa is represented by the modern Begram, and this was the view of the French archaeological mission,⁶ the reason being that Masson found vast quantities of Greek coins about Begram, including thousands of those of Eucratides, who is known from one of his coin-legends to have ruled in Kapisa (p. 212). But Begram is on the west side of the united rivers, in what was once Opiane. What the mass of coins found about Begram therefore shows is that the mint (or principal mint) and trading centre of the Greek rulers of Kapisa lay west of the united rivers, \*i.e.\* in Alexandria. ### [c18.18](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.tarn-1938.c18.18) ⁶ Foucher, Afghanistan p. 269. ### [c18.19](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.tarn-1938.c18.19) There seems only one solution. Alexandria-Kapisa was a double city; the Greek Alexandria stood on the west bank of the united Panjshir-Ghorband rivers near the confluence, facing the native Kapisa on the east bank, and the two formed one city; and what Begram, a name meaning ‘the city’,¹ really represents is not so much Kapisa as Alexandria. Greeks \*may\* have tended to call the double city Alexandria and Indians Kapisa,² but there was no clear rule, for the name Alexandria appears in the Milinda and the name Kapisa in one of Pliny’s sources. For consideration of what such a double city might mean I must refer to the text (p. 98); others of course are known. On the evidence of literature and the coins, which is all we have, there seems to be no other explanation; but it is to be hoped that some day it may be possible to test it by excavation. ### [c18.20](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.tarn-1938.c18.20) ¹ Mazumdar in Cunningham, \*Geog.\* p. 672. ### [c18.21](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.tarn-1938.c18.21) ² \*E.g.\* Mahāmāyūrī ll. 83, 94 (Lévi, \*JA\* 1915 pp. 52, 55) and the Kharoshthi inscription on one of Eucratides’ coin-series (p. 212). But it is said not to be mentioned in any Sanscrit text. ## Linked texts (4) - [Naturalis historia](https://indike.org/pramana/inf.la.imperial.pliny-elder.6.62) — C. Plinius Secundus, Latin - [Milindapañha](https://indike.org/pramana/in.bauddha.theravada.sp.khuddaka.milindapanha) — Pāli - [Historiae Alexandri Magni](https://indike.org/pramana/inf.la.imperial.curtius) — Q. Curtius Rufus, Latin - [Mahāmāyūrī](https://indike.org/pramana/in.bauddha.sanskrit.dharani.protection.peacock) — Sanskrit --- Source: [https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.tarn-1938.c18](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.tarn-1938.c18) · Pramāṇa